Big Barda

Last week we polled you on some of comics' most celebrated couples. Rather than pitting them head to head, we offered a straight vote between 'True Love' and 'Bad Romance,' and as a result, we have a list of twenty couples rated for greatness, with Harley Quinn and Joker down at the bottom, and the perhaps surprising choice of Wally West and Linda Park at #1. But a lot of famous couples are missing from the list, and even though Valentine's Day is behind us, we've not yet had our fill of love.

So here's your opportunity to nominate the other couples that need to be voted on to come up with the definitive list of comics' greatest romantic couples. Wally and Linda are the current king and queen, but can another couple claim their crowns?

A: You know, Reverend, ComicsAlliance is having a poll right this very minute to determine what our readers think is the greatest superhero romance, but as we all know, polls deal in opinion, while Ask Chris deals entirely in facts. Sure, they might appear to just be opinions with a lot of exclamation points thrown in, but trust me, it'll save us all a lot of time if we just agree that they're facts and move on.

Unleash your OTPs! As lovers everywhere get ready for a Valentine's Day weekend full of romance and passion, and as everyone else updates their Netflix lists and wonders if they're finally desperate enough to check out Hemlock Grove, it's time to ask you, the big-hearted ComicsAlliance readers, to rate some of the greatest romances in comics history to determine which of these legendary pairings is comics' greatest love story!

Over the next three days we'll present you with a selection of the most celebrated couples in comics. All you have to do is say if their love is built to last or doomed to fail. If you think a couple should be together forever, through all the reboots and break-ups that a cruel god can throw at them, vote 'True Love'. If you think that the couple aren't really right together and maybe ought to reconsider everything their relationship is built on, vote 'Bad Romance'. The couple with the highest 'True Love' score will be have bragging rights as the best couple, and isn't that what Valentine's Day is really all about?

DC unveiled a post-Convergence line-up of titles last week that included two new solo titles for female heroes -- Black Canary, by Brenden Fletcher, Annie Wu, and Irene Koh; and Starfire by Jimmy Palmiotti, Amanda Conner, and Emanuela Lupacchino. These books join the current line-up of Wonder Woman, Catwoman, Batgirl, and Harley Quinn. The publisher also announced the cancellation of Supergirl and Batwoman, leaving the number of DC solo titles starring women at a steady six.

Clearly DC can do better than that. The publisher has a wealth of great female characters that haven't headlined their own solo series recently, or in some cases at all. DC clearly knows that the audience for these heroes is out there, but maybe it doesn't know who its next headliner should be. So ComicsAlliance will give them a little help by asking you, the readers, to vote for the DC woman you think most deserves her own book. (Spoiler: We know they all do.)

If you spend as much time thinking about comics as I do, you probably find yourself creating hypothetical-based thought experiments about super-team line-ups and such. Usually I only share them with Chris Sims, who then goes on to turn them into an Ask Chris and get paid for my idea. [cough]

But a few weeks ago, I took to Twitter to ask people who they would recruit for an all-female, seven-member Justice League. The response at the time was great, with lots of interesting variation in potential team rosters, but then the idea got a bump again when artists started posting drawings of their ideal Justice Ladies teams on Twitter and Tumblr.

I've collected nine such line-ups, including my own, which kicked everything off, but you can check my Twitter feed to see all the responses I received.

Of all the characters that Jack Kirby created for DC Comics in the 1970s, a roster that includes OMAC and the Demon, the ones that have always resonated the most with readers are undoubtedly Mister Miracle and Big Barda. The story of a super-escape artist who fled an oppressive planet rather than be changed into something he wasn't, and a fierce warrior who overcame her brutal conditioning and learned to love, and how they conquered evil is, one of the most compelling things Kirby created in a long and unmatched career in superhero comics, and it's been a favorite of subsequent creators over the past 40 years too.

One such creator is Ramón Pérez, the Eisner-winning cartoonist of Jim Henson's Tale of Sand, who revealed on Twitter this week that he pitched a Mister Miracle and Big Barda series that "died because of the New 52."

Truly, we are living in a fallen world, but the good news is that you can at least check out a sample of Pérez's work.

Over a lifetime of reading comics, Senior Writer Chris Sims has developed an inexhaustible arsenal of facts and opinions. That's why, each and every week, we turn to you to put his comics culture knowledge to the test as he responds to your reader questions!

Q: In response to the all X-Women X-Men team: Who would you put on an all female Avengers/JLA/Defenders/whatever? -- @WBXylo

As we move towards Valentine's Day, our thoughts here at ComicsAlliance naturally turn to Superman. He has, after all, been at the center of one of the greatest romances in the history of comics. His love for Lois Lane is beautiful on so many levels, centered on the idea that that the most powerful person in the universe falls in love with someone defined by her wit and determination. Even at the height of the Silver Age, when Lois's romantic pursuits could charitably be referred to as "obsessive," there's still a genuine sweetness to it.

There are a lot of pretty faces in comics, but the ladies who can pretty much wipe the floor with anyone who gets in their way are the ones who really win our hearts. Chris Sims of The Invincible Super-Blog returns to Co

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